The Road
by YellowRosesAndHearts
Summary: Jane and Lisbon driving back home in "Carnilian inc." One-shot. Patrick/Teresa.


_**In "Bloodshot" there's that little scene when Jane is driving back to the precinct, and Lisbon is next to him, sleeping, and he wakes her up and tells her to talk to him. This is basically that scene, but I've added dialogue to the end, because the scene itself is a short one. If you haven't seen the ep, the part where Jane goes "Interesting" in this fic is the end of the actual scene on the show. Jane/Lisbon of course, but UST, because no one gets together in my stories. Ever. Reviews are cool.**_

Tired. It has been a fourteen hour work day and counting, and she sits, knees up in the passenger seat facing Jane, head resting on her own left shoulder. The need to pay her more. Hourly, maybe, but detectives never get paid hourly. Most likely because, like her, they are liable to work fourteen hour days. She is lounging in the chair, listening to the soft jazz on the station Jane picked out as it fades into nothing—drifting in and out of consciousness, lulled by the vibrations of the car zipping down the highway and slicing through the windy night.

A surprisingly intimate rumble from next to her, "Talk to me."

She remains there, eyes closed. Her limbs are hanging, worn out from a long day of walking and interviewing, and she is suddenly aware of the small-ness of her positioning—her arms folded at her waist and her legs clenched up, feet not touching the ground.

She is suddenly invaded by a feeling of familiarity—remembering being a little kid, maybe eight years old, coming home from the Monday-night dance classes her mother had insisted on her taking. The studio had been about forty minutes away and her dad would pick her up every week, and she would always fall asleep before they got all the way home.

She would usually still be wearing her soft ballet shoes—she would be so tired by the time her dad picked her up that she wouldn't even change back into her street clothes. Her mother hated it, said she would get her shoes dirty if she walked in them outside, but her father could never say no to her and would pick her up and carry her to the car, so that they wouldn't get dirty, and her mother wouldn't know. He would let her sit in the front seat, something else her mother never allowed, and would also put on the soft jazz music that she hears now, the soft saxophones and gentle guitars.

Laying there, she half expects to open her eyes and find her father in the drivers' seat instead of Jane—before everything went to crap, before everything happened, when she was just a little girl and he was just her reliable, functional daddy.

But she shouldn't be thinking about this in front of Jane, he'll probe, as he's prone to do, and so she doesn't open her eyes, doesn't want to give him anything.

"Do I have to?" She gurgles back, and is shocked at the sound of her own voice—it is husky and sleepy, and the sudden intimacy of their positioning comes over her gradually—she is almost asleep with her body curled toward him, her head on her own shoulder, but nearly on his. At this angle she can smell the subtle spicy cologne he wears on his neck with her own fruity shampoo, and the whole setting is shockingly intimate.

She chances a glance at him. He isn't watching her, for once—he has both hands on the steering wheel, and is looking straight ahead. He most likely hasn't shaved in a day or two, and there is a subtle shadow on his cheeks and chin. His eyes are tired, keeping them open seems to be a heavy effort, and there are slight bags under them. She gets the urge to ask him if he's been not sleeping again—she knows he goes in and out of it, and he's never looked more tired to her than he does right now.

"You don't have to. I can fall asleep and crash into a pole, your choice."

She rolls her eyes and tries to think of something. Asking him if he's been sleeping lately isn't exactly good conversation, and anyway, she's never the one who initiates personal sharing.

"Seen any good movies lately?" She finally asks him, inwardly wincing as the words leave her mouth. She has never been good at small talk. She gets people to tell her the most private, embarrassing details of their personal lives for a living, but she's always been horrible at surface conversations. It's part of her issue with dating. Bar talk is small talk by nature, and she can never seem to put on the sparkling, shallow conversation that people indulge in when they first meet each other.

"Not really," he says. "You?"

"No," she says, annoyed at herself for introducing this topic.

"Interesting..." he snarks. She laughs a little. Jane is almost as bad at small talk as she is, she's noticed it before. But unlike her, he doesn't let this short-coming hold him back: he bypasses small talk entirely, and goes immediately into personal, probing questions. He can get away with it because he's Jane—because the charming, relaxed smile and dancing eyes have the irritating tendency to make you want to tell him things.

She has seen it work on the rest of the team—Jane probably knows more about their personal lives than any of them. He knows all about Rigsby's feelings for Van Pelt, all about the subtleties of Van Pelt's feelings back, about Cho's family and his lack of personal life. If someone were to give them all an SAT of sorts testing their knowledge of each other—of Rigsby's mothers' name, or Van Pelt's high school, or the name of the woman Cho lost his virginity to—all factual questions, and thus having nothing to do with his gifts of observation—Jane would kick all of their asses with his score. He inspires an easy intimacy, and if she didn't know better, if she was just a bit less strong than she was, he would probably know everything about her.

And yet if any of them were to be given any sort of test about Jane—anything about his personal life or past at all, she is sure they would all fail. She doesn't know what his wife's name was, or how long they were married before his daughter was born. She doesn't know about anyone he's ever dated besides her except Sophie—and she isn't even entirely sure he dated Sophie. Each tiny glimpse she gets into him as a person shocks her. Like the time they were staying in the hotel because they were working a case far away from home, and she went to the lobby to get a cup of tea at three in the morning to find him in the hallway, pacing around, still wearing his suit like he hadn't slept and didn't intend to. Or the time she found out he had that breakdown after his wife died. She hates that he can inspire intimacy with all of his ease and charm, by making you feel like you knew him too—until you realized, later, that he had remained opaque and unreadable.

She suddenly thinks of their talk earlier—when she told Jane she didn't trust him, and that she doubted he trusted her either. She had been truly surprised when he had acted confused and said, "I trust people. I trust you." He had looked so wounded when she told him she didn't trust him, and it shocked her that he hadn't picked up on it. She has the tendency to view him as the psychic he used to pretend to be, and is always surprised when he doesn't know something.

She feels like he knows more about her than she'd be willing to give if it were up to her—and this thought, really, is the reason she doesn't trust him. Sure, he manipulates her, lies to her on cases, but that's really not it. It's that she doesn't get to reveal what she will when she wants to with him. He is always one or two steps ahead of her and she hates it, but finds it so interesting, so irritatingly intriguing. As someone who hates small talk, she sometimes enjoys his reading her. If only he didn't do it all the time. If only she weren't sure he does it when she doesn't want him to. As sick as it is, it would make it easier for her to trust him if she knew she at least had the ability to hide things from him. As it is, it doesn't matter if she trusts him—he knows too much about her, anyway. She finds herself withholding her trust more out of stubbornness or spite than anything.

"You're staring at me, Lisbon." Jane doesn't take his eyes off the road, but a subtle smile plays across his face. "Like what you see?" He asks playfully.

She rolls her eyes. "Not especially."

"That hurts my feelings, a little." He turns a little, watches her out of the corner of his eyes. "So what are you thinking about?"

"I don't know. Why don't you tell me, Jane? That's what you're good at." She realizes she is still in the position she was in when her eyes were closed—body curled up toward him, feeling the warmth radiating from his skin, and notices a piece of her own dark hair resting on Jane's shoulder. She embarrasedly swishes all of her hair to the other side, and turns to face closer to the window.

"You miss the old vans," he says, surprising her.

"I do?"

"The space is bigger. You feel like you're too close to me, right now. It makes you uncomfortable."

She does. Miss the vans, that is, and she does feel an apprehension at being too close to Jane. There is something else, though, behind it—a hum of excitement in her limbs at the feeling of his elbow almost touching hers, and the strained, tired register of his voice is husky and somewhat sensual. A big part of her wants to curl back up the way she was, and take it in again. Or remembering when he was temporarily blind and she made some joke at him, and his hands suddenly came out to clasp her shoulder, worked up to her face. She didn't flinch away like she was supposed to, but asked him what he was doing. "I want to know what your face feels like when you're smiling," he'd said. She'd been struck by the intimacy then, too, the sensuality of him touching her face, but she'd felt safer. He couldn't see her. Couldn't see what kind of smile she was smiling.

She waits for him to tell her this part, but it doesn't come. She is sure he would tell her this if he noticed it—Jane is too cheeky, and frankly, too cocky, to let something like this slide. And yet he doesn't say anything. He focuses on the road, and reading his face, all she sees is tired: not the familiar expression of the gears working behind his eyes when he's working something out about someone.

She suddenly feels wide awake and giggles, hiding her smile with her hands, sliding her eyes to look at him sideways. He turns and looks at her and raises an eyebrow, but he still doesn't have that expression, nor the triumphant one he gets when he's figured something out. She may not be Patrick Jane, but she's pretty observant herself, and even he is not entirely unreadable.

The look in his eye, the easy twinkle and quick smile suddenly hits her differently: it doesn't make her jump, and it isn't scary. She doesn't push down the feeling, not this time.

For once, it feels like it's just for her.


End file.
